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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26065450">this first-light mountain</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/pearthery/pseuds/pearthery'>pearthery</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Gintama</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Gintama Episode 73, Imagery, Introspection, M/M, Missing Scene, and gintoki appreciation, masamune deserved BETTER, remember marinosuke the hunter dude from episode 73 the one with the bear and the mushroom hunting!, that dude!, vague descriptions of digging a grave (for a bear), whoohoo!, yeah!</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-08-23</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-08-23</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 11:55:55</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,383</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26065450</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/pearthery/pseuds/pearthery</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes you have to kill the things you love, says the samurai.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Sakata Gintoki/Marinosuke</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>13</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>29</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>this first-light mountain</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/Official_Biscuit_Moron/gifts">Official_Biscuit_Moron</a>.</li>



    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>haha, what's this? a fic about a flyaway gintama one shot character? an absolute, what the heck, where-did-this-come-from pair? a rarepair? a rarepear? anyway, it's time for gintoki propaganda. remember his smile in this episode? you should. pls consider this very obscure and rare ship, ahahaha, where did this come from, ahahaha, you think sakagin is underrated? understated? think again, i introduce to you: ginnosuke </p><p>title comes from Jane Hirshfield's poem, Mountainal !!</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>In autumn, the mountain changes. Glossy green canopies turn slowly brown, sun-bleached by summer and stripped clean by the wind, and the leaf litter darkens, thickens, the flimsy fabric of deciduous leaves rotting slowly into the soil. Sky is blue and grey. The cloud-crowned mountain sits silent on the line between heaven and earth.</p><p>Marinosuke does not cry. He looks at the great, gruesome heap of Masamune's body and he does not cry. He buries the great, gruesome beast—monster of his own making—in the dark, rotting soil, where the worms are crawling and the crows pierce their beaks as they look for food, and he heaves the dark, rotting soil over coarse, brown fur, and he pats it down gently with his dirt-stained hands, the dark, rotting soil over cooling flesh, his dirt-stained hands laid flat over the grave, grave filled with dark, rotting soil. He does not cry. </p><p>"In autumn, it is the way of things to die. Autumn is a season of transition," says Marinosuke to the samurai. "It is the passage from life to death, from the heat of summer to the chill of winter." </p><p>In autumn, the grass turns gold. Pale gold. Cold gold. Golden fields of grass all the way from the edge of the sun-bleached forest to the sun-bleached shore. A golden sea of grass, the same colour as yellowed bones under wilting fronds. Masamune's fur shone gold in the light as they rolled him into the grave-pit. </p><p>"This is the cycle of living things," says Marinosuke to the samurai. "In my village, we were taught the Hunter's Creed to never interfere with this cycle. But I guess you amateurs never learned that, huh?" </p><p>"Well, you know," says the samurai, "teenagers are precocious things. Nosiness and stubbornness is how they grow." He shrugs and leans against his shovel, kimono sleeve billowing white and blue-grey in the soft breeze.</p><p>"Stubbornness, ah?" says Marinosuke wryly. "Have you not stopped growing, then?" </p><p>The samurai whips his head around. "What? What are you suggesting?! I assure you that Gin-san is a fully-fledged adult who has hair in all the right places!" </p><p>"I never asked about your hair."</p><p>"He even has hair growing down there! Thick and curly, matching perfectly with the curtains!"</p><p>"Oi, I never asked you that."</p><p>"I wash it thoroughly every day in the shower! From top to bottom, Gin-san is as clean as a freshly washed parfait glass, ready to be filled with delicious, delicious sugar! A distinguished and admirable adu—ah!"</p><p>Marinosuke raises a tired palm to his face. "This is why amateurs keep my hands full." </p><p>The samurai hauls himself off the ground where he'd fallen and picks up his shovel. He continues where he left off. </p><p>"A distinguished and admirable adult! You're talking to an expert here. I know my way around a wilderness!"</p><p>Marinosuke isn't so sure. He's a young thing, the samurai. Younger than him. You wouldn't know it by the whitish shade of his hair or the weariness in his eyes—once quiet, that is, once still, because the man in motion is a different creature—but he hasn't lived for all that long. He's a real amateur. A real greenhorn. Little, budding leaf. </p><p>Marinosuke doesn't know why he brought him here. Yesterday, Marinosuke killed the cub he had raised and left his body to feed the crows. Yesterday, he followed a merry band of idiots down the mountain and back to the village for treatment, and that was supposed to be the end of it. </p><p>But yesterday, yesterday, Marinosuke ate at their fire and told them his story, and the samurai smiled at him and said, "you've got it wrong," and "no one knows what to do after they've climbed up their mountain," and "how will you know if there's another mountain for you to climb?" and yesterday, the samurai said, "it's a heavy burden, isn't it?" and "they probably don't need those tools in the shed, tomorrow," and "oi, do you want to pay your respects?"</p><p>And now it is morning and the two kids and the massive dog are still sleeping in the village and the trees are hunched over the damp soil and the birds are coming back to the forest and the samurai opens his palm like he is inviting him to sit at the campfire. The sun had set over the mountain of Masamune's body and now it is rising over his gravestone. Marinosuke lowers his eyes to the blurred carcass of daylight that drapes limp over the curved rock.</p><p>"Gimme the shovel," says the samurai. "Say what you need to."</p><p>"I've already said goodbye. What else is there?"</p><p>"Is goodbye the only thing you wanna tell him?" the samurai says. He doesn't press. He looks into the sky like there are things that he would like to say to it, or maybe, like there are things that he wants to hear, declared, spoken, whispered from the heavens. There is a sense of melancholy to his demeanour that he hadn't worn around his children. </p><p>"It's not like that," says Marinosuke. "He can't hear it anyway. His spirit is gone."</p><p>"Then say it for yourself." </p><p>Marinosuke kneels in front of the dark soil and the shining rock and laughs, just a little. How easy, it sounds, to say it for yourself. </p><p>"What," he barks. "What would you know, greenhorn!"</p><p>"Oi," says the samurai, coming down to sit beside him in the dirt. "You're a hundred years too young to call me a greenhorn. I've lived through a lot, huh." </p><p>"You can't fool me with that, city-slicker. I've been a hunter since I was six. I know how the world works. I know the pattern of life and death like everything else in this forest." Marinosuke holds a hand up to his throat and presses into the pulse point with his thumb. The blood pumps under the pad of his fingers, skin meeting skin, and the flesh is warm and soft and alive. As he breathes, he imagines his lungs expanding, like the bright red cap of mushrooms at the base of a looming tree, splaying out in the cavern made by its roots.</p><p>"My own teacher died at my hand," says the samurai. Marinosuke stops breathing. "I never knew why, but he loved autumn out of all of the seasons. He always said it was a season of change and passing."</p><p>"Why did you kill him?" asks Marinosuke, quietly. </p><p>"Sometimes we have to kill the things we love," says the samurai, and his eyes are dark and far-away. </p><p>When the other man walks away, Marinosuke shifts out of his kneeling position and sits cross-legged, like he did when he beckoned the cub into his arms all those years ago. Soft, brown fur fills his memories. Masamune is dead. He was a mistake and self-made duty that Marinosuke brought upon himself and upon everything on this mountain. He killed people in the village. A monster of his making. Massive, and so full of rage. </p><p>But before that, he was just a bear cub, wide-eyed and trusting, young and small. </p><p>"Masamune," says Marinosuke. His eyes are wet. "I will live for you too." </p><p>He finds the samurai picking mushrooms higher up the mountain, where the conifers start to dot the mountainside. Pine needles sprawl across the ground, a tartan of green and gold as the thin leaves overlap and interlace. </p><p>"A season of transition," says the samurai, crouching to pluck a mushroom from the base of a fractured log. "You find that some things grow even when everything else has died." </p><p>In autumn, the mushrooms grow dense in the damp shade of tired trees. Springing fresh from the leaf litter, rich and fibrous, they dot the undergrowth. High above, branches spread out in the wide space given for them to grow, sunlight dripping through the thin slits in the canopy and falling warmly on the leaf-litter. </p><p>The samurai looks up at him, open and trusting, in his strange way. The line of his mouth curves upwards. He smiled the same way back in that hollow beneath the tree. Soft and encouraging. It was a smile that made you think you could be forgiven.</p><p>"Let's go down the mountain," says Marinosuke, and he holds out his dirt-stained hand. </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>thank you very very much if youve read to the end, i hope you have considered this very ridiculous premise and i hope that i have helped you truly realise the scope of gintoki's attraction to scruffy middle-aged men!!! </p><p>(whoohoo Biscuit i did it! thank you very very much for supporting the stinky old man romance agenda! it is being furthered, i assure you i am doing my best!!!)</p></blockquote></div></div>
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